The Tau Ceti Agenda

just more women who had made it to the top and managed to stay there.

Purposefully, again from the beginning, Elle had placed men in charge of the actual 'boots on the ground' terrorist cells. The outcome of that approach had been to generate a military arm that was led mostly by men. Elle had come to believe from her personal experience with men that it was easier to manipulate them into hostile and dangerous action than it was women. Machismo and bravado were emotions that she could readily manipulate. Men were better at war, and women were better at business, she thought. It was her personal preference, whether there was actual truth to her beliefs or not. Her being the head terrorist-in-charge was enough to make the belief embedded in the culture for good.

As the Separatist Laborers Guild grew and became an extremely powerful economic engine, fiscal classes began to emerge. Effectively, within the Separatist society, there was an upper class of businesswomen and an upper class of warrior men. There were likewise many others in classes from poor to wealthy. The culture mimicked the cellular leadership structure from top to bottom. It was common in most families that the dominant wife led the household and ran it with the help of several other wives, while the men were in some form or other connected to military matters. There were, of course, men in business and women in the military, but the average was the other way around.

Copernicus, normal zoom on all windows, please, she told her AIC.

Yes, ma'am.

The window decreased to normal zoom. The sky was filled with stars, and the limb of the gaseous, giant planet that Ares orbited was beginning to peek over the horizon, bringing a faint violet hue to the night sky that Elle had grown to love. The view from the Capitol Building was nothing less than breathtaking.

Make the dome transparent, Copernicus. And you can turn the DTM desktop back on.

Yes, ma'am. Ah, Sol is rising just above the horizon now. Her AIC switched the polarity of the electromagnetic field on the armor, changing the ceiling of the dome from opaque to clear. Sol was just rising above the Jovian's rings in the constellation Bootes. The star of her birth world, Mars, was nearly twelve light-years away and appeared as a bright, second-magnitude star in the constellation. It was a wonderful view of the heavens but was mostly lost on Elle, as most of her attention reverted back to the datastreams coming in through the direct-to-mind link, describing the macroscopic details of the Separatist Nation.

Ma'am?

Yes?

Scotty would like to see you now if you are available. Your calendar is free for the next few hours. You have a sleep cycle scheduled.

Send him in.

Yes, ma'am. He is bug-free as best we can tell. When Copernicus assured Elle that someone was bug-free, the odds were high that that was indeed the case. Elle had seen to it decades earlier that Copernicus was the smartest AI she could find, and her penthouse had all the latest scanners known to humanity.

Elle sat back in her desk chair and looked at a picture frame sitting next to her redwood pen and pencil set. The frame held a picture in it that Scotty had given her at the end of the Exodus day. Elle examined the picture fondly and picked it up with both hands while tracing the outline of the picture with her thumbs. It was in a nice Mars cherry tree wood frame and covered with an anti-glare pane of glass. The photograph it held was of the newly elected Democratic President Sienna Madira with the freshly congressionally approved Supreme Court Chief Justice Scotty P. Mueller. The chief justice had just sworn in the new president, and they were shaking hands. There was handwriting on the picture that amused Elle to no end. She laughed at it as the memory of autographing the photo flooded her mind. It was a quote that she had often used in her term as president—one that she had stolen from a centuries-past president, Ronald Reagan:

'The best minds are not in government; if they were, business would hire them away. Thanks, Sienna Madira, President of the United States of America.'

Elle sat the photo back on her desk at the southwest window, which was slightly open. Scotty casually strolled toward her with a blank stare on his face. Elle was pretty certain from the look that he was reading something DTM. She didn't interrupt but instead watched him as he stood in thought for a few more seconds.

'General, thanks for seeing me,' Scotty said as the stare melted to a smile. The two had known each other for decades. They had died together and had also been resurrected together. They had planned the Exodus and the movements of historical events in at least three star systems together, and there was more to come. Much more to come.

'We're alone, Scotty,' she said. 'Well, other than Socks over there.' Elle nodded to the kitty at the foot of her bed.

'Meow,' the artificial intelligence kitty replied.

'Aww, Socks. Now come here, kitty,' Elle called to her AIK. The artificial cat jumped up from its comfy bed and ran across the hardwood floor with a pitter-pat of tabby feet and then nuzzled up to Elle's shins and purred. Unless the AIK was analyzed with quantum- membrane technology sensors or it was torn apart and examined, it was indiscernible from a real orange tabby cat. Elle picked up the AIK and gently stroked the robotic pet's fur. It continued to purr softly, which soothed Elle's nerves. She relaxed in her desk chair and continued to scratch behind the cat's ears.

'Oh, well then, if we are alone, it is good to see you, Madam President,' Scotty said earnestly.

'Oh, knock that shit off will you, Scotty?' Elle said with a dismissing wave of her hand. 'What can I do for you at such a late hour?'

What time is it anyway, Copernicus?

1:36 AM, ma'am.

'Well, Elle, I've been running some more simulations of the election, and I think today could be too early to make the assassination attempt. It won't impact the large group of voters at Luna City anyway, and that is where this election is going to be lost or won. The values we used for the GROWTH-star and the WAR-sub-t coefficients seem to be low when you consider the economic fuel that Moore has created in his military buildup. And the DURATION-sub-t and the a7 coefficients just seem to me to be pulled out of thin goddamned air. If you ask me —'